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Thursday, November 5, 2015

Vatican City, 5 November 2015 (VIS) –
A message was published today from the Holy Father to Cardinal Kurt
Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, and
all the participants in the meeting of the Global Christian Forum
which took place in Tirana, Albania from 2 to 4 November on the theme
“Discrimination, persecution, martyrdom: following Christ
together”.

The Pope extends special greetings to
brothers and sisters of different Christian traditions who represent
communities suffering for their profession of faith in Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Saviour. “I think with great sadness of the escalating
discrimination and persecution against Christians in the Middle East,
Africa, Asia and elsewhere throughout the world. Your gathering shows
that, as Christians, we are not indifferent to our suffering brothers
and sisters”.

“In various parts of the world, the
witness to Christ, even to the shedding of blood, has become a shared
experience of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants,
Evangelicals and Pentecostals, which is deeper and stronger than the
differences which still separate our Churches and Ecclesial
Communities”, the Pope observed. “The communio martyrum is the
greatest sign of our journeying together. At the same time, your
gathering will give voice to the victims of such injustice and
violence, and seek to show the path that will lead the human family
out of this tragic situation”.

Francis concludes by assuring all those
present of his spiritual closeness, and expressing his hope that the
martyrs of today, belonging to many Christian traditions, “help us
to understand that all the baptised are members of the same Body of
Christ, His Church. Let us see this profound truth as a call to
persevere on our ecumenical journey towards full and visible
communion, growing more and more in love and mutual understanding”.

The Forum urged persecutors to cease
their violence, and exhorted governments to respect and protect
religious freedom, and especially to protect Christians and others
persecuted for their religious beliefs and the media to reflect
appropriately on violations of religious freedom and the
discrimination and persecution of Christians.

During the three days of the meeting,
the participants began the day with prayer in the orthodox cathedral
of Tirana, dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ, the Centre of the
Evangelical Alliance of Albania, and the Catholic St. Paul's
Cathedral, to pray for the 200 million Christians persecuted in the
world. The Forum concluded on the day on which Albanese Catholics
commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first Mass celebrated in the
Catholic cemetery of Scutari by a priest who survived 50 years of
atheist communism in Albania.